Pages

02 July 2019

Royal Emerald Brides

STEVE PARSONS/AFP/Getty Images

Royal brides often wear tiaras set with diamonds and pearls for their wedding day, but some of the more adventurous royal ladies have chosen tiaras set with colorful stones. Today, we've got a look at royal brides who wore emeralds in their wedding tiaras.

Princess Victoria Melita's Diamond and Emerald Tiara

When Princess Victoria Melita of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha married her first cousin, Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse and by Rhine, in 1894, she wore a tiara set with large emeralds for the festivities. The sparkler was a gift from her parents, the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and was part of a suite that also included a pearl and emerald necklace and an emerald bracelet. The marriage was not a success, ending in divorce in 1901, but Victoria Melita kept her wedding emeralds even as she embarked on a second set of nuptials with another of her first cousins, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich of Russia. (Read more about the tiara here!)

Wikimedia Commons

Queen Soraya's Emerald Sunburst Tiara

For her 1951 wedding to the Shah of Iran, Soraya Esfandiary-Bakhtiary wore an enormous Christian Dior gown and a Juliet cap encrusted with gems. For the reception that followed, she swapped out the cap for a modern parure of diamond and emerald jewels, including a tiara with a sunburst design. When she failed to provide the Shah with children, however, the marriage ended. Soraya left the country, but her emeralds stayed behind, where they were worn by other family members -- including the Shah's next wife, Farah. (More on the tiara over here!)

Andreas Rentz/Getty Images

Princess Sofia's Palmette Tiara

To provide her new daughter-in-law, Sofia Hellqvist, with a suitable wedding tiara, Queen Silvia of Sweden had one of her diamond and emerald necklaces reworked in Thailand. The result was a diamond palmette tiara with emerald toppers. Sofia wore the tiara with emeralds to marry Prince Carl Philip in 2015, but in later appearances, she revealed that the tiara could also be worn with pearls, or with no topper stones at all. Thrillingly, it was also doubly convertible, able to be worn in a more open halo setting. (More on the tiara here!)

This grand diamond and emerald sparkler has been with the Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg for generations, and in June 2017, it came out of the vaults for a family wedding. Sophie of Löwenstein-Wertheim-Freudenberg chose the tiara, which features distinctive emerald cabochon drops, for her wedding to Constantine Fugger von Babenhausen, in Wertheim. (More on the tiara here!)

DANNY LAWSON/AFP/Getty Images

The Greville Emerald Kokoshnik

The most famous emerald wedding tiara in recent royal memory is undoubtedly the grand Greville Emerald Kokoshnik, worn by Princess Eugenie of York for her 2018 wedding to Jack Brooksbank. The tiara hadn't seen the light of day for decades; it was bequeathed to the Queen Mum by Mrs. Greville in the 1940s, but it hadn't been worn in public by a royal until Eugenie emerged in the tiara in October. (Learn more about it over here!)